


Sweeten the Sword

by jjtaylor



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Call Down the Hawk, M/M, Post-Call Down the Hawk, The Dreamers Trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23081230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor
Summary: Adam finds Ronan in the somwhere-in-between.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 3
Kudos: 51





	Sweeten the Sword

The coastline of liminal Ireland is squally. Ronan dreams leather hoodies into existence. Tents the color of the seafoam. Cups of instant ramen, straight out of the cave mouth of a microwave.

In summoning warmheartedness, he is dreaming of Adam, who is in front of him, sitting cross-legged in the same thick scrubby grass. 

“Shit,” he spits out and reaches for his sword.

“Calm yourself, rogue,” Hennessy soothes.

“Nope,” Bryde says, from somewhere.

“It’s ok,” Adam speaks over them. “It’s me.”

“He needs a nickname,” Hennessy insists.

“He already has several.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like the feel of them in my mouth.”

Bryde doesn’t answer, possibly because the concept of mouthfeel remains out of his reach after so long of not having a human mouth at all.

“It’s really me,” Adam says. “You believe me.”

“I always believe you, Parrish.”

They are in dreamspace. This is why Adam can be here. Ronan has not stolen a fragment of Adam, dreamed or dragged him forth; Adam is here from his own dream, a magician’s dream. 

Bryde is too busy bantering with Hennessy to protest - no, if Bryde didn’t want Adam here he wouldn’t be here.

The wind is tugging at Adam’s hair in a way that makes Ronan’s fingers jealous.

“You came,” Ronan says.

Adam gives him a look Ronan adds to his overflowing collection. 

“You almost got shot.” Adam says. “Nice sword.”

VEXED TO NIGHTMARE is in Ronan’s lap. Sheathed so as not to cut dream!Adam into a slice of the sky.

“How are you doing this?” Ronan says, gesturing to Adam’s entire presence here in this dreamspace. 

“I don’t just go to classes,” Adam says. “This was easier to find, but harder to knock. How’re your new friends?”

“They’re not my friends,” Ronan bites, defensive, Adam peeling back the pile of junk he keeps over the pit of missing Gansey and even reluctantly Blue. What they had, all of them. The pit leads to Matthew, and the horrible shift in his personality when the lie unraveled. The black hole of his father, the black seep of his mother - 

“Hey,” Adam says, a hand on Ronan’s knee. It’s warm. It transports him to summer, to lazy stretched out mornings together at the Barns.

“Let me show you around,” Ronan says. 

“Don’t jump off of any cliffs, pocket knife!” Hennessy calls.

“No,” Bryde says. 

Ronan could jump off a cliff here and never need to land. 

Down by an outcropping of rocks where the ocean spray almost but not quite kicks up onto their feet, Ronan kisses Adam, and tastes the salt air on his lips.

“I know you don’t want to ask but I saw Matthew and Declan,” Adam says. “Not like this. I took your bike. It’s break.” He reads the misery in Ronan’s shoulders, the ripple of the muscles in his jaw. “I wasn’t expecting we’d be able to swing a transatlantic vacation.”

“No airplanes needed,” Ronan says. 

“Gansey says it’s about the end of the world.”

“Gansey was probably talking about global warming.”

Ronan basks in the brightness of Adam’s smile. Freckles like a map Ronan dreamed to a hidden grove of contentment.

“Does Bryde have a plan?”

“He’s making us work for every word of it,” Ronan says. “Hennessy thinks he’s buying time while he figures it out.”

“Blue would like her,” Adam says. 

“They should never meet.”

“Maybe that’s how the end of the world starts,” Adam says. “Are there a lot of you? Dreamers?”

“Not for long. I was gonna get an apartment,” Ronan says mournfully. “But I fucked that up. If I was better - ”

“I don’t want some better version of you,” Adam says. 

Adam kisses him first this time, his hand at the back of Ronan’s skull like he’s holding a crystal ball and about to see into the future.

“I don’t know how long we’ll stay here.”

“Like I said, it was easy to find.”

“But hard to knock.”

“I wouldn’t have a Ronan-shaped door in my life if I minded a few bloody knuckles.” Adam’s smile flashes quick, then disappears. “They’re gonna pull me back in a few minutes,” Adam adds, rueful.

“You - ,” they both say at the same time and Ronan doesn’t mind having a blade-sharp smile when Adam’s there to mirror a softer, kinder mouth.

Hands clasped together, they listen to the waves until Adam, eyes mischievous, magical, tugs Ronan toward the very edge of the rocks. 

Together, they jump.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Josh Ritter's To the Dogs or Whoever, recommended for any Adam/Ronan playlist.


End file.
